In sum, this report finds that providing access to Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole. For 3-year-olds, there are few sustained benefits, although access to the program may lead to improved parent-child relationships through 1st grade...

For students who were randomly assigned to Head Start or not at the age of 4, the researchers collected 19 measures of cognitive impacts at the end of kindergarten and 22 measures when those students finished 1st grade. Of those 41 measures only 1 was significant and positive. The remaining 40 showed no statistically significant difference. The one significant effect was for receptive vocabulary, which showed no significant advantage for Head Start students after kindergarten but somehow re-emerged at the end of 1st grade.

The study used the more relaxed p< .1 standard for statistical significance, so we could have seen about 4 significant differences by chance alone and only saw 1. That positive effect had an effect size of .09, which is relatively modest. ...

I think it is safe to say from this very rigorous evaluation that Head Start had no lasting effect on the academic preparation of students.

Further evidence that pre-K does not produce lasting gains in student achievement comes from states that have universal pre-K programs.

Georgia started its universal pre-K program in 1992 and Oklahoma began its universal pre-K program in 1998. Since then, both states' scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fourth-grade reading tests have roughly mirrored the national average. While many factors influence test scores, if pre-K were as important as its supporters claim, some level of improvement should be seen.

Some lawmakers, as did Sen. Horsford in the Senate Finance meeting, cite Florida's universal pre-K system and Florida's remarkable achievement gains since 1998 as evidence that pre-K works. Such arguments, however, show either ignorance or willful disregard of what actually happened in Florida.

The Abecedarian Project was much more than preschool. The program put infants — who were, on average, 4.4 months old — into a 40-hour per-week education center. The pre-K component of the program appeared to have no effect on learning:

This means that the actual preschool component appears to have had no effect whatsoever. Since current preschool programs and proposals do not begin within a child's first year, this study actually suggests that preschool programs are ineffectual, and hence should be neither passed nor expanded.

You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of current reality, whatever they might be. [Emphasis added] - Jim Collins, Good to Great.

Issues

Victor Joecks is executive vice president at the Nevada Policy Research Institute and oversees the execution of NPRI's strategic plan and policy initiatives. He joined the Institute in 2009 and previously served as its communication director. Under his leadership, NPRI obtained record amounts of state and national media coverage.